[ACTION BELOW] Amidst as well as in the aftermath of the extreme devastation that Hurricane Maria visited upon Puerto Rico, the president left hundreds of people to die and thousands to suffer. He did so out of racist, maliciously purposeful negligence. Consider what it means to not impeach over that prejudiced, intentional abdication of duty. For justice for all to mean what it says, impeachment must include accountability on behalf of the people of the US territory of Puerto Rico.
That is but one of the scores of abuses of power and neglects of responsibility that, each on their own, warrant removal from office. For jusutice for all, the House of Representatives should pass articles of impeachment on all of them.
The intentional and unlawful withholding of duly appropriated public funds for foreign aid, the extortion of a foreign leader, and the pursuit of a politically motivated and fabricated foreign investigation in Ukraine, all for personal electoral gain, are likewise grounds for impeachment and removal. Those acts seriously threaten the validity and fair process of the 2020 presidential election. But for the House to impeach on that alone would mean to tacitly accept all of the other offenses as
not impeachable, to acquiesce to their apparent legitimacy as perhaps poor policy choices, rather than to address those offenses as the grave transgressions against law, against the Constitution, against the nation, and against humanity that they are.
And it is not solely a matter of congresspeople fulfilling their oaths of office to protect and defend the Constitution, nor of basic accountability, nor of morality (all of which apply). It is a matter of whether we fight fascism and win back democracy or whether, out of inaction, we risk losing it all. If the House does a
pro forma impeachment and leaves the Senate the political space to too readily acquit, and if there is not even a prospect of further impeachment with potential for conviction and removal, then as Rep. Al Green and others have warned, the president would be unbound by any law or check and would realize the power of a foul king.
I don’t believe that restricting impeachment to Ukraine has the benefit of keeping it “simple” and easy for the public to understand and support. It muddies the message to say that this one thing is bad and the rest are not great but okay. It disregards the suffering of the multitudes of people who the administration has wronged and is harming now and for the foreseeable future.
No, to impeach on everything illuminates the pattern of anti-democratic tyranny. It sets the standard that now we really do insist, consequentially and not just rhetorically, that no one is above the law. People won’t tire of impeachment or of the Democrats, people will tire of the endless horrific train of this Republican administration’s crimes of office, as televised House hearing after hearing breaks through the corporate media barrier. Let us broaden the relevance of impeachment to all those affected, righteously rally their support for comprehensive justice, and carry that political wave into the Senate trial to secure conviction and removal.
The signaling from the House Democratic leadership has mostly been toward a limited impeachment on the Ukraine extortion scandal and closely related matters or possibly also on obstruction of the Mueller investigation. Monday at 9 AM Eastern, Chairman Nadler will lead the Committee on the Judiciary to hear representatives of the Select Committee on Intelligence present findings on the Ukraine extortion scandal relevant to impeachment. All signs point to the House leadership’s intention to hold a floor vote on articles of impeachment before Christmas break.
But there is also this news:
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a CNN town hall that Democrats are working “collectively” on determining what will go into the articles of impeachment.
Asked by CNN's Jake Tapper about whether obstruction of justice charges from special counsel Robert Mueller's report will be included, Pelosi said, “We’re operating collectively. It’s not going to be — somebody puts something on the table. We have our own, should we say, communication with each other.”
She declined to go further.
“I’m not going to answer one charge — we’re not writing the articles of impeachment here tonight," Pelosi said.
A little over two months ago, after activists drove mounting public pressure to impeach on other grounds, and after the Ukraine extortion scandal whistleblower news broke and induced the House Democratic majority to commit to the pursuit of impeachment, news reports indicated that six committees would determine what impeachment should cover and that they would report their findings back to the Judiciary Committee. Those committees were Intelligence, Oversight and Reform, Foreign Affairs, Financial Services, Ways and Means, and Judiciary itself. The first three were supposed to investigate Ukraine, though no publicly known limits were set on any of them.
[MAIN ACTION] So there is a narrow window of time to demand that the House impeach comprehensively. That’s where you come in!
Please call your congressperson’s DC office today and ask him or her to insist upon it. You can ask for support of
an activist coalition set of six draft articles, presented by Free Speech for People. You can mention a charge or two that you think are most important. You can support other organizations’ draft articles (see the end of the post) or offer your own.
You can also call the committee staff directly and ask them to pursue charges relevant to their subject areas:
202 225-3625
Ways and Means
If you call today, thanks for your effort to rescue democracy! If you want to do more, then you can participate in an an action that grassroots national activist group
By the People is running: make a sign, record a video of yourself about what you think is the most important article of impeachment, and post it online. You can promote it with
#ImpeachForThePeople (see also
#ExpandTheScope).
Also, Indivisible national is running an action to call people in critical senators' states, so that we can get constituents to demand that their senators conduct a fair trial. It's a pretty slick setup: once you call and get someone who's interested, the call system connects them directly to their senator's office. If you make some of these additional efforts, seriously, my hat is off to you!
Absolutely, there is urgency in moving the impeachment process forward, to capitalize upon the political pressure built with news coverage of the Ukraine extortion scandal as well as to protect the country before the president does even more harm, as he certainly will. Republicans are further encouraging foreign interference and carrying out extensive efforts to corrupt the vote even now.
But also, we need our representatives to take seriously the imperative make conviction and removal actually happen. The best way to do that is for the House of Representatives, and for the congressional Democrats as the opposition party, to formally declare this Republican administration’s abuses of power illegitimate and grounds for removal from office. That means comprehensive articles of impeachment and a flood of prosecutorial-style public impeachment hearings to match. For democracy, we need justice for all.
Draft articles of impeachment:
- #ImpeachForThePeople activist coalition, Impeachment for the People — supported by By the People, CREDO Action, Free Speech For People, Courage Campaign, Democracy For America, Equal Justice Society, Mainers for Accountable Leadership, March For Truth, Movement School, Presente, Progressive Democrats of America, Revolving Door Project, and Women’s March
- Roots Action, Trump Articles of Impeachment — extensive!
- Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, H.Res.396 — includes the prez’s white supremacism, attacks on the free press, and more
- Free Speech for People, The Legal Case for a Congressional Investigation on Whether to Impeach President Donald J. Trump — formal articles, and there’s more about abuse of emergency powers, the Ukraine scandal, and racism and bigotry
- The Impeachment Project, Resolution to Authorize Impeachment Hearings and our Articles of Impeachment — I think it’s a related effort
- Need to Impeach, Trump’s 10 Impeachable Offenses — Steyer’s former group, pretty good list
- Liberal Thinking’s Articles of Impeachment here on Daily Kos